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To Make Coffee

A method for preparing coffee using coffee, egg yolk, and warm water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
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To Make Coffee

Why it works: Coffee and egg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 29% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,239 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

To Make Coffee

serves 3

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Use red coffee, not too brown, in the proportion of 1 pound for 3 people.

  2. In a basin, mix the egg yolk with warm water until it has a mortar-like consistency.

Brew and serve

  1. Add the coffee to the mixture in a coffee pot.

  2. Boil the mixture and let it boil for a few minutes.

  3. Allow it to stand for a few minutes before serving.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Coffee + eggtop 29% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,239 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Coffee
Provides the main flavour and aroma of the drink.
Egg yolk
Binds with the warm water to form a paste that helps settle the coffee grounds.

The step that matters

Boil the mixture and let it boil for a few minutes. Boiling extracts flavour from the grounds, but boiling too long or too hard can make the coffee bitter. Keep the boil brief and then let it stand so the grounds settle.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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